Not applicable.
Not applicable.
When preparing a seedbed, it is necessary to break apart crop residue and loosen the top soil. Many implements have been devised to work the soil and prepare it to best receive seeds. Rotating reels slice surface material; plows, shanks, and cupped or inclined disks horizontally till the soil, and spike tooth harrows loosen the soil. Yet, each time that a tractor pulls an implement across a field, there is the possibility of compacting the soil and thereby lessening the quality of the seedbed. Moreover, each crossing of the field by a tractor represents an additional investment of labor, fuel, and machine wear, which factors into the cost of the production of a commodity that is competitively priced. To minimize the steps to preparing the seedbed, low-till methods have been developed which involve chopping the plant residue while disturbing only the top layer of the soil. The low-till method allows plant residue to remain on the surface of the soil unburied. When crop residue remains on the surface, the soil better retains moisture and the residue reduces erosion caused by air and water. Moreover, exposed crop residue on the surface, because it is exposed to the air, decomposes, which returns nutrients to the soil.
The low-till method can require multiple tilling operations to be performed by different agricultural devices. To save time and energy, existing agricultural implements have consolidated these devices onto a single trailer that is pulled behind a tractor. For example, a single implement such as the Amco ST2 SUPER-TILL seedbed conditioner has two rows of live leaf or Danish shanks, followed by chopper reels, spike tooth harrows, and a choice of a drag board, double rolling baskets, or a drag pipe as a rear finishing attachment. However, the rows of shanks produce horizontal tillage of the soil, contributing to an undesirable compaction of the soil.
The McFarlane SPIRAL REEL stalk chopper, manufactured by the Mc Farlane Manufacturing Company, Inc., of Sauk City, Wis., has a spiral reel, followed by a flexible spike tooth harrow, with a trailing spreader board. This implement avoids horizontal tillage, and fields treated by such an apparatus tend to have well developed plant root structures.
Because improved seedbed conditions can result in improved yields, and hence greater profitability, there is a continuing need for a combination of field treatments that will result in optimal crop growing conditions. What is needed is a low-till agricultural implement that can prepare a superior seedbed by chopping up plant residue without burying it, while disturbing only the top layer of soil and minimizing horizontal tilling.
The implement of this invention has an array of circular blades mounted perpendicular to horizontal shafts, known as a straight coulter, followed by one or more reels, which are followed by spike toothed harrows. The implement does not have any horizontal tillage tools, such as cultivator shoes or inclined or cupped discs, which would work the soil horizontally. Horizontal tillage of necessity creates soil regions of greater or lesser compaction. When the plant""s roots encounter a more compacted portion of soil, the root will often divert around it, detrimentally consuming plant resources. By slicing through the soil first in the direction of travel by the straight coulter, and then perpendicular to the direction of travel by the reels, the surface material such as stalks and weeds is reduced to small pieces, regardless of orientation, while there is minimal horizontal distribution of the soil. The implement aids in drying the soil surface layer, and, by cutting up residue and even spreading, the implement helps to warm up the soil.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a farm implement to be pulled behind a vehicle that performs a low-till operation on a field by chopping plant residue without burying the residue under the soil.
It is another object of the present invention to provide an agricultural implement that minimizes horizontal tillage by utilizing flat, circular blades that extend vertically from a shaft.
It is an additional object of the present invention to provide an agricultural implement that performs a low-till operation on the soil in one pass over the field.
Further objects, features and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the following detailed description when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.